Front cover -- Enhancing Competences for Competitive Advantage -- Copyright page -- Contents -- List of contributors -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Lobbying: strategies to make a firm's competences generate value -- Introduction -- Theory -- Method -- Results -- Summary and outlook -- References -- Appendix. Check of trustworthiness by applying the criteria of Flint et al. (2002) -- Chapter 2. Competence-based strategies of service transition -- 1. The relevance of services for manufacturing firms: service transition as a source of growth and competitive advantage -- 2. A resource-based view of service transition -- 3. The role of services in the industry life cycle -- 4. Service transition in the German mechanical engineering industry -- 5. Conclusion: transformation trajectory from hardware manufacturers to service providers -- References -- Chapter 3. Enhancing the inflow of knowledge: elaborating the absorptive capacity cycle in SMEs -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Absorptive capacity in SMEs: state of the field -- 3. Methods -- 4. Case study results: KM project as a means to facilitate AC -- 5. Discussion and conclusion -- References -- Chapter 4. Toyota's competitive advantage: path dependency, dynamic capabilities, and sources of inimitability - a contrastive study with Nissan -- Introduction -- The Japanese automobile industry in the early post-war years -- Resource heterogeneity: Toyota versus Nissan -- The Toyota keiretsu and the Nissan keiretsu - similar but different -- Competitive advantage: paths, processes, and inimitability -- Conclusions and future research -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 5. Toward the theory of temporary competitive advantage in internationalization -- Introduction -- Dynamic resource-based internationalization -- Data analysis and methodology -- Case: the global test and measurement sector -- Discussion -- Note.
Explores the ways in which an organization's existing competences can be enhanced as sources of competitive advantage - either enduring or intendedly transitional.
